Fort Worth is known to most as Cowtown, but to Laura Johnson and Nathan Garwood, it will forever be a scene straight from Doctor Who.

The weekend before Halloween 2011, Nathan walked into the Flying Saucer and noticed Laura and friends dressed in character. “It was just one of those things that I had to say something. It was Fort Worth, of all places, to run into British TV nerds,” says Nathan, who just so happened to be dressed as the Doctor himself.

For the next two hours, Laura and friends chatted with Nathan. After that, Nathan says he kept trying to ask Laura out to dinner, but she was always booked solid.

“I thought he was pretty cute, but it never occurred to me that that was actually a request for a date,” says Laura, who was transitioning into a new job and juggling extracurricular activities. “I had other things on my mind.”

But in July 2012, Nathan posted on Facebook that he would need a designated driver for his birthday party, and Laura showed up to help out. Nathan turned his attention to Laura, so much so that they ditched the party and wound up at a club. When their friends went to get another round, Laura says Nathan made a bold move.

“He turned to me and said something like, ‘There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a while. Would it be all right if I gave you a kiss?’ I said, ‘All right.’”

Within days, they made their relationship official on Facebook.

“She’s the nicest person I’ve ever met,” says Nathan, a manager in sales and distribution for Royal Cup Coffee. “She is loyal and so respectful. To find somebody who’s got those old-school values, you just don’t find that anywhere.”

From then on, there was no question when Nathan asked Laura to clear her calendar that he did indeed want a date.

“I like that he is very old-fashioned in a good way,” she says. “He actually opens doors for me and buys me flowers. He’s a romantic.”

He’s so romantic that Laura didn’t pick up on his clues that he was about to propose on Dec. 8. He asked her three weeks ahead of time to clear her calendar for a day at the arcade and dinner.

“Surprising her with it was the hardest thing,” he says.

As they drove into Fort Worth from Nathan’s Irving apartment, fireworks filled the sky. Although unplanned, it set the tone. Romance was unfolding with dinner at the Reata.

“The entire square was all lit up for Christmas and was overlooking Sundance Square, which is where we met,” she says. “He managed to get the very corner table. It was as picturesque and as scenic a view as you could possibly get. I should have realized.”

After dinner but before dessert, Nathan suggested they visit the rooftop to check out the view. He asked Laura if she was happy with her life. He had a whole speech planned but then got nervous. Instead, he told her she made him the happiest man in the world but that he needed to ask her a question.

“I had no idea it was coming,” says Laura, a processor for Written Deposition Service, a third-party legal records company in Farmers Branch.

“He does romantic gestures all of the time. I was in denial this could possibly be it, until the moment I saw the ring.”

Nathan had dropped to his knee and said he had only gotten as far as “Will you marry … ” when Laura pulled him up to plant a kiss on him. Nathan’s friend, a professional photographer, snapped shots from a distance to commemorate the moment.

Nathan and Laura will marry Oct. 26 at Legacy Church in Plano, almost exactly two years from the day they met.

“I was worried that it was going to end up being too fast, but it’s absolutely not,” says Laura, 25. “It’s one of those things that when you know, you know. He’s everything I could ever want.”

Are you young and recently engaged? Or do you have a milestone anniversary coming soon? We’d like to hear from you. Email Kathleen Green at dmngreen@sbcglobal.net.

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